520 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 280
Houston, TX 77027
713.963.9390
713.963.8527 (fax)

STAFF | VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES | BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Staff

Sonya L. Renner, CFRE, Regional Director
Karen Turney, Regional Development Officer
Nathalie Herpin, Regional Development Coordinator

The Southwest Chapter is grateful for the volunteer leadership of our Board of Directors.

Recent Events

Believe in Zero Launch Events

In recent months, the Texas Region launched the “Believe in Zero” celebrity-led campaign for child survival with three special events in Houston and Dallas.

© Rita Lim

Leela Krishnamurthy, Susan Boggio 

Last December, Susan and Dan Boggio welcomed Caryl Stern, President and CEO of the U.S Fund for UNICEF to an intimate gathering in their holiday adorned Memorial area home.  Tony Pantaleoni, U.S. Fund for UNICEF National Board Chair, father of UNICEF celebrity ambassador Tea Leoni, and son of U.S. Fund for UNICEF founder Helenka Pantaleoni joined Caryl and lent his support to the campaign.  The evening presentation featured a celebrity-led video heralding the message that no child should ever die from preventable causes and that UNICEF commits to whatever it takes to end the unnecessary deaths of 24,000 children who die every day from preventable causes. Caryl Stern called on guests to renew their commitment to “Believe in Zero”.

» view photos from the event

© Pete Baatz

Nidhika Mehta, Pinder Gill 

Nidhika and Pershant Mehta began 2009 by hosting an evening cocktail reception at their beautiful home in support of UNICEF to continue raising awareness for “Believe in Zero”.

More than 100 guests gathered to welcome Caryl to Houston for the second time in as many months. Caryl highlighted UNICEF’s current efforts in areas such as immunization, water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS programs, healthcare and nutrition, and education in places like Darfur, India, Vietnam and Malawi.  She spoke of her experience in Sierra Leone where she witnessed the death of a newborn less than 7 days old from tetanus, a disease preventable with the appropriate medication costing only $1.40; she recounted her participation in the daily routine of women and children fetching water from a well more than a mile away from their village, a task they carried out with singing and dancing under the scorching heat of the sun.

Thanks to UNICEF, a water pump now makes water available to all in their village. She finished by urging the guests to support UNICEF’s work in programs such as these, which all help accomplish the goal of zero.

» view photos from the event

© Jason Wynn

Joyce Goss, Scott & Carole Murray

In May, Dallas Dynamic Duo Trisha Boulogne and Joyce Goss joined forces to launch the UNICEF “Believe in Zero” campaign in that city at Kenny Goss’s beautiful, art-filled home in Highland Park. Dallasites gathered to give a warm Texas welcome to Una McCauley, fresh off the plane from UNICEF’s office in Togo.  The crowd listened with compassion as she described life in this small, often forgotten but important country in West Africa, and how UNICEF is working to save and improve the lives of children there.  After learning about these many challenges, Trisha and Joyce encouraged their guests to “Believe in Zero,” too!

» view photos from the event

Emergency Relief Efforts

UNICEF responds with urgency to prevent cholera, malnutrition and child exploitation in DRC
Up to 100,000 people—around 60 percent of which are children—have fled their homes due to heavy fighting between armed groups in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This brings the total number of internally displaced to around one million, or 20 percent of the entire North Kivu population. The condition of newly displaced children and women is desperate. Thousands have had very little to eat since fleeing. Their access to clean water and health care has been minimal. Hundreds of children are presumed to have been separated from their families, forced to fend for their survival on their own. The consequences could be fatal for scores of children, both those displaced and those hosting the displaced. UNICEF, with its partners, is reinforcing emergency responses to the newly displaced.

UNICEF supports families of victims of collapsed school in Haiti
While search and rescue operations continue to extricate students and teachers from the rubbles of La Promesse school in Port-au-Prince, UNICEF expresses sympathies and solidarity with the families of the victims. An estimated 700 students were registered in the private school for children of lower-income families. A number of them were in the classrooms when the walls and the roof collapsed. This follows on the heels of the destruction of four successive hurricanes. According to the Government of Haiti, an estimated 300,000 children are in need of aid throughout the country. UNICEF airlifted 11.5 tons of relief supplies to help victims of the hurricanes.

180 days after Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar relief efforts on track but support is still needed
At the end of October, six months after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta, relief efforts are on track, but support is still required to bring medium to long-term solutions to children and their families. “As much damage and suffering as the cyclone has caused, it is also a chance to build back better. Now is the time to bring permanent solutions to improve the lives of children and their families and the future generations,” said Ramesh Shrestha, Resident Representative of UNICEF Myanmar. As a standard-setting model for all school reconstruction to come, UNICEF plans to construct seven model safe and child-friendly schools. While planning for longer term solutions, the immediate relief effort continues with more than 390,000 children in 2,500 schools benefiting from UNICEF support. UNICEF will continue providing relief supplies and strengthening community networks as well as training health staff and teachers in the affected areas.

Measles Initiative supports disease prevention for children in China’s earthquake zone
The devastating earthquake in central China on May 12, 2008 took the lives of more than 70,000 people, and left some 15 million homeless. It also destroyed buildings and infrastructure, including health and immunization facilities. The Measles Initiative is helping restore and strengthen these health systems, including replacing immunization infrastructure, conducting trainings, supporting school-age vaccinations, expanding outreach to unimmunized children, as well as conducting disease surveillance and outbreak investigations. The Measles Initiative is a partnership committed to reducing measles deaths globally. Launched in 2001, the Initiative—led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the World Health Organization—provides technical and financial support to governments and communities on vaccination campaigns worldwide.

Field Visits

© UNICEF/ HQ98-0510/Pirozzi

SIERRA LEONE: An adolescent girl holds her baby in her lap near Freetown, the capital.

"I have recently returned from Sierra Leone where I bore witness to a seven-day-old baby dying from tetanus. TETANUS—a disease usually prevented and if not, cured by a $2 readily available serum here in the United States, but not in Sierra Leone. As I looked into the face of the baby’s Mom, I promised that I would do everything in my power to ensure that Americans come together and work until we can indeed reduce the 24,000 daily preventable deaths of children under the age of five, to zero."
- Caryl M. Stern, President and CEO, U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Volunteer Opportunities

© U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Volunteer/Interns from the University of Houston: Aydin, Business Major from Turkey, and Slava, Anthropology Major from Bulgaria

If you would like to volunteer to help raise money through Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF or other youth activities, please call 1.800.4UNICEF.

If you are interested in volunteering for local events, office or clerical work, or applying for internships, please contact Nathalie Herpin, Regional Development Coordinator at (713) 963-9390 or download the volunteer application and fax to (713) 963-8527.

Board of Directors

Advisory Council